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3 Political Style in Modern Melanesia* State and Society in Papua New Guinea 3 POLITICAL STYLE IN MODERN MELANESIA* In recent writing about contemporary politics in Melanesia one frequently comes across the term style. The suggestion seems to be that there is, if not a unique, at least a distinctive Melanesian style (or styles) of politics. Hegarty, for example, speaks of an ‘essentially accommodative political and governmental style’ in Papua New Guinea (1979c:110) and Quiros (1979) speaks simi- larly of a ‘conciliatory style of political leadership’ in that coun- try. (Also see Standish 1978:29 and Herlihy 1982:575.) Mela- nesian political leaders themselves frequently talk about doing things ‘in the Melanesian Way’ (for example, see Lini 1980). This paper seeks to identify some of the elements of political style in modern Melanesia and to relate them to broader aspects of the region’s political culture. I begin by accepting that there is such a thing as political style; I will not, however, attempt to define the term, except to say that it has something to do with the way in which nations’ leaders (and by extension nations themselves) behave within a frame- work set by formal constitutions and realpolitik. The suggestion that one can distinguish a national or regional political style implies the existence of an identifiable political culture,1 though * This paper was presented at a seminar at the ANU in 1980 and published in R.J. May and Hank Nelson (eds), Melanesia Beyond Diversity (1982). 1 On the concept of political culture see Almond and Verba (1963), Pye and Verba (1965), Almond and Powell (1966:chapter 3), Kavanagh (1972). This writing might be compared with the earlier literature on ‘national char- acter’, of which there is an extensive review in Inkeles and Levinson (1969). 36 Political Style in Modern Melanesia it does not deny the importance of individual personality in po- litical style. By way of crude illustration, from outside Melanesia: I think one might reasonably argue that, say, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Emperor Bokassa, Ferdinand Marcos, and Bob Hawke display a variety of political styles which reflects differences in the respective political cultures from which they have emerged, and which could not be easily transferred from one political culture to another, and that the spectacle of the United States presidential elections reflects a style of politics which varies from that of even such other predominantly Anglo-Saxon Western democracies as the United Kingdom and Australia. The literature of political science has little to say about politi- cal style at an aggregative level, except perhaps in the field of international relations where several authors have referred to national styles as an important factor in determining patterns of international negotiations (for example, see Druckman 1977 and references cited therein; Spanier 1978: chapter 12). There is, on the other hand, a substantial literature on personality and poli- tics (much of it contributed by psychologists), which has a lot to say about individual styles and has occasionally attempted to make the leap from the individual to the group or nation, mostly however in the context of ‘developed’ societies.2 The anthropo- logical literature on leadership in Melanesia is also of obvious relevance to the question of style in modern politics, but except for the work of Standish on Simbu politics (especially Standish 1983, 1992) and perhaps that of Finney (1973) on bigmen and bisnis – both of which are about Papua New Guinea highlands societies – there appears to have been little interest in the rela- tionship between traditional and modern political styles. 2 The personality-and-politics literature is well reviewed in Greenstein (1969, 1975). There is also an extensive bibliography in Hermann (1977). For specific comments on aggregative analyses of personality and poli- tics see Greenstein (1969:120-140; 1975:60-68). Probably the best known study of personality and politics in ‘transitional societies’, is that of Pye (1962); there is also some interesting material in Legge (1973). 37 State and Society in Papua New Guinea In approaching the question of political style in modern Mela- nesia one possible method would be to compile a series of po- litical biographies and attempt to generalise national character- istics from these. Entertaining though such an exercise might be, the prospect of deriving some stylistic equivalent of a ‘modal personality’ from profiles of political leaders as personally dis- parate as, say, Walter Lini, Iambakey Okuk, Marten Tabu, John Kasaipwalova, Jimmy Stevens and Ratu Mara seems sufficiently daunting to suggest an alternative approach (a reaction which recent personality-and-politics studies would seem to support). By way of alternative, it might be argued that if there is a dis- tinctive Melanesian style of politics (or if there are distinctive styles) one might expect to locate its essence in a specifically Melanesian political culture (or cultures). Constraints of time and space prevent me from attempting to draw a comprehensive pic- ture of Melanesian political culture. Instead I will suggest that there is a number of respects in which the culture(s) and the re- cent political history of Melanesia are, if not unique, at least unu- sual. Some of these are examined briefly in the following para- graphs. The scale of politics and the politics of scale Ward (1982) has touched on the question of the relative small- ness and isolation of Melanesian societies and the impact this has had on their politics. This relationship is examined in greater detail in Benedict (1967) and in May and Tupouniua (1980). To quote from the latter: The relationships between individuals in a small scale society thus tend to be more intense and social transactions to be dominated by personal relationships reflecting, amongst other things, kin- ship, village ties and ascriptive status. At the same time, the mem- bers of a small scale society tend to be more dependent upon one another’s actions than do those of a larger society. Typically, po- litical and economic relations are dominated by series of recipro- 38 Political Style in Modern Melanesia cal obligations (between equals and between patrons and clients) but it is common, also, for small-scale societies to employ social pressures to ensure individual conformity to the values and objectives of the group. It is often suggested that smallness of scale promotes social cohesion, however there is little evidence for this; indeed as Benedict (1967:49) rightly points out, “intense factionalism” is a common feature of small communities. [May and Tupouniua 1980:423] Diversity and (a little bit) beyond Melanesia’s diversity is legendary. Linguists have commented on the region’s extraordinary linguistic diversity – and have made the interesting suggestion (Laycock 1982:33-38) that this diver- sity is not a function of isolation but that language has been used deliberately as a means of differentiating one group from another. Prehistorians and anthropologists, while reminding us of the extent of traditional exchange networks, have described a situa- tion in which social units were typically small and in which intergroup relations were limited both in physical range and content.3 It may be that we are sometimes inclined to overem- phasise the extent of isolationism in pre-contact Melanesia; nev- ertheless the fact remains that even compared with tribal Asia and Africa, pre-contact Melanesia was fragmented to an unusu- ally high degree and that to a substantial extent this fragmenta- tion has survived the colonial period. Related to this is a provocative suggestion made by Barnes (1962/71:9): A characteristic of highland cultures, and perhaps of Melanesia as a whole, is the high value placed on violence . In these cir- cumstances we might expect to find a less developed system of alliances and ‘counterveiling’ forces, and less developed arrange- ments for maintaining peace, than we would have in a polity di- rected to peace and prosperity. 3 See papers in May and Nelson (1982 vol 1). 39 State and Society in Papua New Guinea Bigmen and all that A substantial body of recent writing on leadership and social stratification in Melanesia seeks to distinguish between a stere- otype of the typical Melanesian traditional society as egalitarian and communalistic, with leadership determined by competition between men of influence (what Standish 1978 refers to as the ‘Bigman Model’), and the reality of socially hierarchical, status- conscious societies in which heredity frequently played an im- portant part in the selection of leaders. Without wishing to de- tract from this recent emphasis on social stratification (except occasionally to query the source of the stereotype), I think it is important that we not lose sight of the essential elements of truth in the stereotype: namely, that relative to Polynesia and most parts of Africa (not to mention traditional societies in Europe and Asia) social stratification in Melanesian traditional societies was not particularly formalised and that traditional institutions such as sorcery and warfare, as well as social attitudes to wealth, were frequently used as a means of preventing forceful individuals or groups from rising too far above the common herd (cf. Moulik 1973:123-127). The exception in this respect, it would seem, is Fiji. There, tra- ditional societies appear to have been more formally stratified and the status ordering, having been consolidated by colonial rule, has so far proved enduring (see Nayacakalou 1975; Nation 1978). Whatever the situation may have been, there is now a well entrenched (if not universally accepted) belief that egalitarian- ism and communalism prevailed in pre-contact Melanesia, and that these values are integral to ‘the Melanesian Way’: . our peoples are communalistic and communalism is the basis for our traditional way of life. Our values therefore must be com- munalistic. [Gris 1975:137] 40 Political Style in Modern Melanesia The colonial experience With respect to the impact of colonial rule on Melanesia’s politi- cal culture, I offer four comments.
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